Concern over press harassment

Concern over the harassment of journalists in Uzbekistan grew on Tuesday as two leading press rights groups, as well as Washington, slammed the Tashkent government. Central Asia’s most populous nation has seen a recent wave of incidents involving alleged curtailment of press freedom. “The political atmosphere is worrisome,” Marika Olsen, country director for Internews told IRIN from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. “We initially had great hopes, but the rash of recent arrests is causing us a lot of concern.” She explained that every time a journalist wrote about the government and its laws, writing a balanced story that reflected the reality of the situation - something negative usually - but not always, happened to either that person or the organisation they worked for. “It’s gone from being very subtle to being much less so,” she maintained, noting ironically that while laws to make the press freer had recently been passed, official censorship had been replaced by self censorship, whereby founders of news organisations were now being held responsible for new items deemed unacceptable to the government. According to the international NGO, Tashkent dismantled the structure for the Inspectorate for the Protection of State Secrets last Spring, thus sending the chief censor into retirement. On 3 July, the Government Committee for Print and Information was changed into the Agency for Print and Information, lowering the status of this government structure, which controls mass media. Ideally, these measures should mean steps forward in liberating the mass media from government influence and pressure, though there remains no significant changes in the mass media landscape in Uzbekistan However, at the last session of the Uzbek parliament in August, there were urgently adopted amendments to the current laws on mass media. These additions relate to the responsibility of mass media organisations for the content of the mass media, with authors and journalists, and therefore further strengthening control on mass media, the group said. But according to Olsen, given the growing amount of money coming into the country, there were things the international community could do. “I would like to see that money - and the ability of things that the country has access to - be more closely tied to greater freedoms: greater democracy and more press freedom,” she said, adding while many international organisations wanted greater freedom inside the country, they failed to make a direct link between that and assistance and loans being provided. “I would like to see that, but it doesn’t seem to be happening,” she cautioned. Sharing that view, country researcher for the international NGO, Reporters Without Borders, Caroline Giraud described the situation inside the country as poor. “For us Uzbekistan is one of the worst countries for freedom of the press,” she told IRIN from Paris, placing blame for the latest incidents clearly at the feet of the Uzbek president. “We consider Islam Karimov, the President of Uzbekistan, as a predator of press freedom,” she said, holding him personally responsible for the harassment of journalists. “The pattern is that when the authorities crack down on journalists, the journalist does go to prison,” she claimed, adding in the last few weeks, there had been a worsening of the situation. Her comments come less than a week after Human Rights Watch said Uzbek authorities were trying to suppress dissent by arresting independent journalists. However, criticism has not been confined to the NGO community. On Monday, Washington reminded Uzbekistan, a key ally in it war against terrorism, that the harassment of journalists was a serious violation of basic democratic principles. Citing the recent detention of Ergash Babajanov, a journalist and a member of the Birlik pro-democracy movement, arrested on 17 February on charges stemming from articles he published in the press, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said although he had been released, charges had yet to be dropped. “We continue to press the Government of Uzbekistan on freedom of the press issues, including this particular case,” he said, adding Tashkent had made a commitment in the US-Uzbekistan Declaration on the Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Framework to intensify the democratic transformation of Uzbekistan, including independence of the media. “We expect to hold them to this commitment,” Boucher said. Commenting on Washington’s stance, Giraud applauded the spokesman’s remarks, noting the strong influence of the US over Uzbekistan. “There is a real interest for the Uzbek authorities to be on good terms with the US,” she said, calling on other influential countries to do the same. According to an AFP report on Monday, Uzbek authorities said last month that Tokhtamurod Toshev, chief editor of the Adolat (Justice) newspaper, by the pro-government Adolat political party had also been arrested. His arrest came just days after another journalist, Gairat Mekhiboyev was convicted of charges including inciting religious dissent and anti-constitutional activity and jailed for seven years, the report added.